The university’s failures in ensuring the safety of student activists became even harder to ignore a few months later. On October 18, 1935, Jules Perlstein, a college leader part of the Columbia Anti-War League and the National Student League, led a protest against Italian fascism just a few feet away from Casa Italiana, the university building on Amsterdam Avenue constructed with support from fascists in Italy, including Mussolini himself. Perlstein spoke to a small group of Columbia students protesting its connections to the Italian government as well as university president Butler’s close relations with fascist leaders. The fact that Butler had stayed with Mussolini in 1927 during his trip to Rome was no secret. Students had also not forgotten Butler’s invitation to Hans Luther, the Nazi ambassador to the U.S., to lecture on Columbia’s campus in 1933, despite their protests.
With this in mind, Perlstein denounced the Italian invasion of Ethiopia that began on October 3, 1935. She called on her classmates to condemn the “dangers to peace” posed by “Mussolini’s African venture.”
Fascist counter-protesters quickly outnumbered the students on the northeast corner of 117th Street, many of whom encircled Perlstein. According to the Spectator, one counter-protester lunged toward Perlstein and attempted to choke her, while another pulled out “a blackjack”—a heavy leather pouch filled with lead or a steel rod—to club Perlstein’s head, which a classmate nearby blocked just in time. A police sergeant quelled the conflict, but, the article notes, he feigned ignorance when a reporter asked him if he saw someone pull out a blackjack, the possession of which was a criminal offense. The sergeant responded: “You’re seeing things…It was only a handkerchief he took outta his pocket. Better see your Optometrist.” Although the Nazi flag had been flown on-campus just months before, the university again failed to prevent fascists from threatening students.
On May 9, 1967, what campus police described as “two fleet of foot students” burned a second wooden cross, this time nine-foot-tall, on the university’s South Field. Captain A. Adam De Nisco, head of the university security force, dismissed the cross burning as a “student prank.” The crime of intimidation was most likely directed toward the Student Homophile League, the first gay student organization in the country, considering it had sent a press release to a number of large national and international news publications five days prior. The news of the formation of the student group traveled fast and drew swift censure from administrators as being reckless and dangerous.